Alteran Alternatives v2.0; Stargate Atlantis/Worm crossover
by Pyrion and Robo Jesus (who wishes he was still drunk 
)
1.05
Admitting everything to dad, in retrospect, took a huge weight off of my shoulders, or at least it felt like it had. Dad's righteous fury was now aimed squarely at Winslow and the PRT, so if nothing else, I knew exactly how he felt.
His suggestion that we talk to the PRT, however, despite my intentions already having been made clear, threw me for a moment. I wasn't going to join the Wards, and if that sham of a press conference was of any indication, the PRT weren't about to fess up to their involvement anytime soon. Still, dad was being dad I supposed, so I'd humor him on this, not that it would change anything.
He picked up the landline and placed the call, and it took me a moment to realize that, for whatever reason, he knew exactly what number to call. No looking it up in a phonebook, no dialing zero for the operator... oh, yeah, two possibilities sprang to mind. Either dad and the PRT conversed often in his capacity as the head of the Dockworkers' Association, or the PRT had contacted him in my brief absence last night.
Probably the latter, since they likely suspected I was a cape by that point. Dad was calling from a landline, so while there were no radio signals to eavesdrop on, the phone handset itself vibrated just enough that I could listen in from where I sat...
"Brockton Bay Parahuman Response Team, this is Caroline speaking, may I ask who's calling?" The receptionist sounded... bored, I suppose.
"Daniel Hebert, of the Dockworkers' Association." So the former reason, then?
The receptionist's tone immediately changed, like she was half-asleep but now paying attention. "Mister Hebert, we've been expecting your call. Transferring you to Director Piggot now, please hold."
So... the latter reason, then. Dad gave me a brief smile, and I shrugged in response. It was still entirely pointless, but I wasn't losing anything by humoring him.
"PRT East-North-East, Emily Piggot speaking."
"Danny Hebert. We... spoke briefly, yesterday." Dad glanced at me again, with a bit more worry in his look. "My daughter got home about half an hour ago, we've... talked..."
The director's sigh was audible. "And it would probably be best if we discussed this in person, yes?"
Dad grit his teeth. "That would... probably be best, yes."
"Excellent. I'll be in my office until... six PM today. When should we expect you?"
Dad glanced in my direction once more. "Is the next hour or two good, kiddo?" I shrugged again. "Yeah, we'll be there around eleven."
"That works, I look forward to meeting you both. Good day Mister Hebert." She hung up.
...Huh. Entirely professional, if a bit clipped, but not the slightest hint of apprehension in her voice. Dad hung up the phone, and then took a deep breath, letting out a long sigh.
"I'm gonna go take a quick shower, get cleaned up for this then. You okay?"
I gave him a reluctant smile. "Yeah... I don't think I need to shower. No dirt or anything clinging to me, actually." I gave myself a brief inspection, for effect more than anything really, before shifting back to my normal, human self.
"Lucky you." He huffed in amusement, "don't have to worry about clothes either. That is a bullshit superpower, kiddo."
Halfway to the bathroom, he turned back to me, a wry grin on his face. "Does this mean I don't have to worry about buying you clothes ever again?"
I rolled my eyes. "Da~ad!"
"I won't complain if you won't. Never again having to feel awkward as a guy in the girls' clothing section of the store will be a plus."
Ugh. He was enjoying this way too much. Then I imagined such a scene, briefly remembered he had been the one to buy me those Armsmaster panties way back... yeah, now that I put that mental image in my head, I could see where he was coming from.
Suddenly needing a distraction to get that picture out of my mind, I plopped down on the couch and turned the television back on. Local news would undoubtedly still be going nuts over my capture of Hookwolf, and...
I blinked in shock.
I was on television. Metalmorph was on television. Or rather,
my fight with Hookwolf was on television. Someone got close enough to record it? The caption at the bottom read "source: Uber & Leet @ YouTube," and I briefly recalled those portions of the fight when my attention was focused mainly on... yeah, okay, replaying the memories, and realizing in the process that I had perfect memory recall, there were several imperfectly-cloaked camera drones, likely Tinker-made, circling around the outside of the building.
The video they had uploaded was obviously clipped in places, set to cheesy action movie music that undoubtedly was ripped from some Earth-Aleph import or other, and featured annotations made by the villain duo that the news channel hadn't bothered to disable. Or maybe it was actually part of the video.
Finding out that Leet was apparently rabidly jealous of my power, or that Uber apparently found the whole situation hilarious? Not important. What was, was that my fight had been recorded, uploaded, and presumably those two were making money off of this. If nothing else, they certainly were getting a lot of attention.
What the fuck?
Dad walked out, dripping wet with a towel around his waist just in time to see my act of shooting Hookwolf with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher in slow-motion.
"Kiddo, is this what they're teaching you in school these days?"
Oh my fucking God. First chance I get, I'm
so gonna kill those two losers! I turned to glance at dad, who still wore the smirk he had prior to his quick shower.
"What? Your old man can't have a sense of humor?"
-----
I wasn't sure if Dad was taking the whole situation in stride, but I was glad he wasn't asking me questions about it that still made me feel awkward even thinking about answering, and the smiles and reassurances he sent my way were something I appreciated. Having spent most of yesterday and this morning being worried sick, I suppose he more than earned the right to crack a few jokes at my expense. Dad then offered to cook me breakfast, which I initially turned down due to "not having to eat." He paused, my omelette still hanging from the spatula, and frowned.
"Bullshit, Taylor, superheroes need their Wheaties, and I can do better."
At this rate, it was probably best not to argue. While I hadn't actually
needed to eat, it wasn't like I didn't benefit any from it, even if I was basically digesting the food on contact. He didn't need to know that, though, nor did he really need to know that I lacked a sense of taste.
"Feeling better?"
I frowned. No, I really wasn't. "Not really. I'm not looking forward to hearing whatever excuses the PRT has for Shadow Stalker, and--"
"We're not going there for that. Come hell or high water, we're gonna get restitution for this. From them, from the school, from Alan if I can help it."
"I don't want their money, dad." The money wouldn't make up for the last two years...
"It's not about that, the only way large organizations like the PRT or Winslow will pay attention to this and do something about it is if you hit them where it hurts. They can't
do anything without large amounts of money, kiddo." He gave me a weary smirk. "Besides, if you're gonna be an independent superhero, you'll need an attorney, and a legal fund. Sooner or later some greedy asshole's gonna sue you for helping them."
I couldn't argue with that.
Dad took a few more minutes after breakfast to comb his hair and tidy up, and inwardly I counted myself ruefully lucky that getting myself ready to go anywhere wasn't something I really had to do anymore. Beyond picking an appropriate form, that is.
On that note, I started giving serious thought to what I was actually going to
say when we got there. Not joining the Wards was a given, but prior to this morning my only reason was avoiding Sophia. Her trying to murder me, not once, but three times, locker, crossbow shot to the head and then the knife... four times if luring me into a fight with Hookwolf was intentional... right, she tried to kill me
repeatedly over the course of two days and obviously had help. I mean, how the hell did she even know where I lived? If Emma had told her, it wasn't done over the phone -
I still had her phone, including their full texting history, which just thinking about would've pushed my blood pressure through the roof if I had any blood... no, much as it galled me that Emma might not be in some way directly responsible for Sophia escalating to attempted murder, it meant that Coil, if he was whom Sophia was arguing with this morning, had somehow learned where I lived, and broke one of the unwritten rules by telling Sophia.
The only other possibility, that Lisa, or another one of the Undersiders, had sold me out to Coil, well, it didn't make much sense. Small-time villains-in-name-only that
wanted me to join them, had prior issues with Shadow Stalker, and even went so far as unmasking themselves to try to convince me? I hadn't heard any of them place calls during the time I was among them, and too little time passed between me leaving while they all slept, and Sophia ambushing me, for that to be plausible.
No. I had to consider the possibility that the PRT had been compromised, that Sophia was but of possibly several moles Coil had among the heroes and their government handlers.
"You ready to go, Taylor?" I could see Dad smiling from behind me as he walked down the stairs to our living room.
Jarred out of my deep thoughts, I blinked a moment before nodding. "Yeah, I was just thinking."
He gave me a wry grin. "Anything you want to share?"
"Just trying to figure out how Sophia knew where we live. She had to have been close by when that accident happened." I stood and, after his gesture towards the front door, approached it and stepped out.
While our immediate neighborhood was otherwise quiet and mostly empty by this hour, I immediately had the feeling of being watched, and kicked my senses into overdrive in return. There were several vehicles parked in the area that I had never seen before, all of them with heavily-tinted windows, but the most obvious was a PRT-branded armored truck, parked half a block away on an adjacent street corner and partially-obscured by a row of hedges. I focused on it for a brief moment, and picked out two distinct lifesigns, both in the front seats. Of the other three foreign vehicles, one was cold and unoccupied, another had just been parked recently but was empty, and the last, a polished black sedan down the street closest to the main intersection, had a single occupant. I kept my focus on that vehicle without actually looking in its direction, as dad and I climbed into his car.
My suspicions quickly began to bear fruit as the unmarked sedan kept its distance while obviously following us. It wasn't noon yet, so traffic within our outskirts of the city was still relatively light. I let myself appear to relax in the passenger seat, but even as dad reached over and patted me on the shoulder while we waited at the third red light in as many minutes, I blinked in sudden concern as the black sedan's driver placed a phone call.
The other side answered after one ring. "You have her in sight?" I inhaled sharply, immediately recognizing the voice.
Coil's voice.
"The target, and her father, at Ninth-and-Earl, eastbound. Faded blue coupe. I'm three cars back." A younger man's voice, one I didn't recognize.
Another voice on the line cut in, "Assault teams are en-route, ETA two minutes." I tensed up and glanced at dad.
He immediately noticed my sudden change in mood. "Something wrong?"
"Black car three rows back. We're being followed, and it's not the PRT."
The light turned green, and dad mashed the accelerator, hard.
"Continuing eastbound, target is... target is running, I might be made."
No shit? Dad, meanwhile, had already blown through a yellow light at fifteen over the limit, and I dropped my focus in favor of scanning everything ahead of us. Taller buildings, denser cross-traffic and the next intersection had a red light. Dad slowed the car, but not by much.
"Heavy cross-traffic at Ninth-and-Sentry, target isn't stopping. Permission to engage?"
Barely a second passed before Coil responded. "Negative. Maintain distance and stand-by, but do not engage." Odd, we were only about a quarter-mile from the PRT headquarters building -- I gripped the right handrail of the door to steady myself as dad weaved through a gap in Sentry Street's one-way cross-traffic -- and we both let out the breath we'd been holding. Dad started chuckling to himself, more nerves than anything I suppose, when a loud screeching wail and strobing lights lit up from behind.
I winced, quickly reviewing the past few seconds in realization that a police car had been lying in wait in a side-alley not a hundred feet past the Sentry Street intersection. Dad groaned, and looked at me for advice. "Taylor?"
"How much farther?" I asked him, as all of the traffic lights turned green on our approach.
Dad looked at me briefly, brow furrowed in puzzlement. "'Bout half a mile, why?"
Rather than answer him, I focused my attention outward, letting my peripheral sense hone in on the closest cellphone tower. In my head, the inner workings of Sophia's phone assembled themselves, and I triggered the autodialer for the number she'd saved as "PRT."
Two rings later, an unfamiliar female voice answered. "Console, go."
"Is this the PRT?" I hurriedly inquired, briefly surprised at how easily my thoughts vocalized over the line despite me not actually speaking.
The other side paused briefly, "...who is this, and how'd you get this number?"
"I'm Metalmorph, and that's not important. My dad and I are headed to the PRT building, Coil just made an attempt on our lives, and we've got a cop chasing us now. We're about two minutes away."
The line on the other end went quiet for a moment, and by this time we had the PRT in sight, though the inner-city traffic had built up such that, seeing no alternative, dad cut us across an intersection into the opposing lanes, making a beeline for the parking garage entrance next door.
Several tense moments passed as dad quickly parked the car, diagonally, into two parking spaces, and the police car parked perpendicular to the parking spaces, blocking us off from backing out. The cop quickly exited his vehicle, gun drawn and pointed at dad from behind his car.
"Get out of the car, hands up where I can see them, now!"
Dad started to follow his order, but I had a better idea. I rolled down my window, leaned out and turned to liquid, spreading my nanomass out over the roof and hood of the car, enveloping it in only a few seconds. I focused the majority of my mass to a point adjacent to the left rear window, and began flowing outwards to retake my human form, hoping the cop would shift his attention (and aim) onto me.
It worked, almost too well. The cop, in a fit of panic, activated his radio and yelled out a code-number along with the phrase "parahuman contact" before he aimed his pistol at my barely-formed "head" and pulled the trigger repeatedly, the bullets harmlessly passing through my mass and shattering the rear window behind. Better it than dad, I supposed.
As my human features started coalescing, several things happened in quick succession: the cop, freaked out both by my transformation and apparent immunity to bullets, started to back away, putting more of his car between himself and me while keeping the gun leveled at my head and yelling "shots fired, no effect!" several times into his radio. From a side exit, PRT troops started streaming out with weapons drawn, an even mix of containment foam sprayers and what looked like energy rifles of some sort. And behind the mass of PRT troops, Miss Militia ran out, apparently at a full sprint.
"Everyone put your weapons down, dammit! Metalmorph is on our side!" She yelled at the PRT forces, before she dashed across the garage to get the cop's attention. "Officer, stand down! Metalmorph is
not a villain!"
"Could've fooled me! They were doing 60 in a 35 zone cutting across traffic in all four lanes! Shit..." He lowered his gun and took a breath "Fuck me... I... I just shot at a
Ward?!"
"She's not a Ward, not yet," Miss Militia gave me a brief glance, eyes crinkled as if smiling underneath her mask, then turned back to the cop, "and if I'm guessing right, she wanted you to shoot her. Right, Metalmorph?"
I shrugged while approaching them. "Better me than my dad." I turned towards him, and called out. "It's okay now dad, I'm fine!"
He struggled out, obviously shaken up by what just happened, anger stretching across his face as he stared at the shattered rear window for a few seconds before quickly glancing at me, Miss Militia, and finally fixating on the cop.
"You shot my daughter."
I sighed. "Dad, it's okay, it didn't hurt, and besides, it's not the first time I've been shot at today."
I got a look from all three of them for that, but it was Miss Militia that reacted first. "Empire?"
"Yeah," I nodded, frowning as I gave Miss Militia a hard stare, "and even they weren't the first."
"We'll talk more about that inside. Our people will escort you two up to the Director's office now, and I'll be along shortly, okay?"
"Yeah, I guess." I nodded noncommittally, then turned and wrapped my left arm around dad's waist, leading him inside. Rapid breaths and a fast heartbeat...
adrenaline rush, I realized.
"Officer, if it helps you to know..." Miss Militia started, as the sliding door closed behind us. I shifted my attention away from that conversation and started giving the PRT's headquarters a critical eye. "Justified paranoia" was my first thought as we walked deeper. My peripheral sense's range dropped off significantly, but that may have had more to do with the sheer amount of information I was picking up versus anything intentional on their part.
Just as an example, the floor tiles would shift and click nearly-imperceptibly, weight sensors most likely, and we had walked through two doorframes sporting some manner of scanning technology that gave audible pings as I passed through. Our escorts didn't seem to mind, so acting like I didn't notice seemed the best approach.
The adjoining room, however, gave me pause. A more conventional x-ray and metal detection checkpoint stood between us and a set of elevators, and the strong magnetic fields made me feel more uncomfortable than my experiments with reproducing that trash can lid had early this morning.
Dad noticed my hesitation, as did our escort, and he leaned over to whisper in my left ear. "It's just a metal detector, kiddo."
"And I'm made of metal, dad. I... don't have a good feeling about this."
Dad gave one of our escorts a pointed look, and the guy rubbed the back of his neck. "Sorry, sir, it's just standard procedure, everyone has to go through."
'Everyone' apparently included our armed escorts, though I had to wonder how much of that was just for show. Still, as we waited in line, the discomfort only got stronger the closer I got to the detector.
Dad pulled out his wallet and sat it on the x-ray conveyor belt, then stepped through the detector. Apparently satisfied, he picked up his wallet, stuffed it into his back pants pocket and then turned to me, nodding expectantly.
Discomfort welling up in me, I reached out and poked my right hand through the detector, and it gave out a shrill alarm as I felt my nanites involuntarily reacting to the strong magnetic fields, the links between them briefly breaking apart before I yanked my arm out and took a deep breath. Several quick conforming energy pulses washed over my right hand, straightening everything out. Strangely, my inner feeling of discomfort quickly bled away, even though I knew I'd still need to step through the damned thing.
Dad had already turned and looked ready to argue my case to the guards when I sighed loudly. "It's okay dad. I think I'm fine now."
He paused mid-breath and looked at me. "You sure?"
I shook my head, and then poked my right hand through once more. The detector gave off its shrill alarm again, but this time my nanites stayed in place. I pressed onward, ignoring the alarm, only for my body to fire off another conforming energy pulse from head to toe as the bulk of my form passed through the detector. The alarm abruptly cut out with an audible pop, and I couldn't help but smirk as smoke began slowly rising from an air vent at the top of the unit.
"Oh for crying out loud," one of the guards complained while he shook his head, even as our escorts quickly covered the amused looks on their faces with their hands, or just turning away. He gave me a pained look, and I shrugged in response.
As our small group stepped into one of the elevators, one of our escorts started chuckling. After seeing the looks from both dad and me, he clarified. "That last security checkpoint's just for show, everyone's under a microscope the moment you walk in, but if the public and politicians don't see the familiar security checkpoints they deal with at airports and bus terminals..."
"They start thinking you're being lax and wasting taxpayer money." Dad finished, with all of our escorts nodding.
"We're actually critically underfunded for a regional branch, though you wouldn't know it just from looking at us," the PRT guy continued, "anyway, you're the one that captured Hookwolf, so there was no point in putting you through that gauntlet, not even for show. Director's orders, though," he made fingerquotes, "everyone gets the same treatment."
The others shook their heads, one rolled his eyes as well, and that one then turned to me and smirked. "Now you probably won't hear this from the Director, and you didn't hear this from us, but Shadow Stalker? That girl was trouble
before she ever joined the Wards--"
"She was working for Coil." I muttered under my breath while glaring at him, and was rewarded by looks of genuine shock and disgust from all three of them.
"That's news... but it explains a lot, actually." He didn't elaborate. "I don't know if the Director knew, and that's way above our combined paygrades anyway, but no matter what else happens today, you've got friends here in the PRT. Word travels fast."
The elevator doors parted, and our escorts quickly reassumed their quiet professional demeanor, though more than a couple times did I get a knowing smile-and-nod either from them or some of the others standing guard throughout the hallways.
"And here we are." We stopped outside a small waiting area consisting of just a few chairs, a small couch and a wall-mounted monitor only displaying the Brockton Bay PRT logo. "The Director's office is next door," our lead escort gestured to his left, "and someone will be by to call you in when she's ready to speak with you."
They turned and left the way we came, and I, meanwhile, took a seat facing the monitor, with dad sitting on the chair to my right. He let out a long sigh and gave me a weary look, before asking me "Taylor, I honestly hope this isn't what you'd consider a 'normal' day from now on. I don't think I can handle the stress, much less the cost."
"I've only been a cape for a day, dad." Not that he didn't have a point, and I couldn't help but wonder whether was I just complaining for the sake of complaining here.
"Yes, and that's what worries me kiddo. You've been shot at several times from
both sides of the law, and it's not even lunch-time yet."
What could I say to that? God I felt guilty dragging him into things like this. I had to fix this, but I had no idea
how. A few seconds later, dad muttered under his breath:
"...will they even pay for the window?"
I frowned at his sudden concern for something so mundane. "I can fix
that, dad."
"Oh, how? I can't imagine independent heroes get paid much. If you joined the Wards, then yeah, they'd probably pay you enough that I wouldn't have to fight the city with a claim against the police department, but..."
I took a breath to protest his argument, then gave up at the sight of the grin forming on his face. "Da~ad! I'm serious, I can fix it! Like this." I snatched an empty, decorative ceramic vase off the table in front of us and effortlessly snapped off a handle. "Watch."
"Uh, Taylor, I doubt the PRT would take kindly to you..." he blinked, ceasing his protest as I held the handle against the vase with my left hand, and ran my thumb and index finger around the seams, a thin film of liquid metal flowing through the cracks as my nanites reattached the handle at a molecular level. "See?" I handed him the vase.
Dad took the vase in both hands, and tugged on the handle, blinking in surprise as it refused to budge. At that moment, my peripheral sense registered someone '
interesting' approaching from an adjacent room at a confident pace, and before he rounded the corner, I knew it was Armsmaster.
"That's... an incredibly useful and unique application of a Changer power, Metalmorph." I stood reflexively, almost in defense, fully aware that I likely looked like the kid whose hand just got caught in the cookie jar. He merely held out his right hand, gesturing for dad to hand him the vase. After a moment, dad did just that.
"You're technically correct, Mr. Hebert, although I doubt Director Piggot would look kindly upon me wasting her time with a vandalism charge for your daughter damaging a fake porcelain vase." He rotated it in his gloved hands, tugging on the handle as well, before nodding to himself. "Thinker, Changer, Striker, and Breaker. Impressive." He set the vase back down on the table, before turning to me. "There is, however, the issue of the phone call you placed a few minutes ago."
I cringed, even as dad's eyebrows furrowed. "She didn't place any phone call, Mister..."
"Armsmaster," he turned and stiffly offered his right hand for a brief handshake, "and yes, she did. With a stolen phone that belongs to a former Ward."
-----
Dad stood, and folded his arms. "Are you charging my daughter with a crime?"
"Hardly," Armsmaster didn't look the least bit intimidated, though I couldn't help but do a double take at his response. "We're more interested in what was said over that phone call versus the fact that your daughter is in possession of Shadow Stalker's personal phone." He turned back to me. "You do have the phone in your possession."
It wasn't a question, and I sighed in resignation. "Yes, and no."
Armsmaster frowned, looking distracted for a moment. "...You're telling the truth. Could you clarify?"
I froze for a second, reconsidering how Lisa and the other Undersiders had reacted to this aspect of my power. Clarifying meant demonstrating that I could both absorb and then reproduce normal technology, which carried a lot of dangerous implications.
I sat back down in the chair, folded my arms and stared straight ahead, as if to say 'don't bother me,' and both Armsmaster and dad frowned in reaction.
"Whatever it is, kiddo, it can't be much worse than what you've shown so far."
When I didn't budge, he looked up at Armsmaster and shrugged. "I'm sorry, sir, in the past when she'd get like this, I've learned not to pry unless it's important."
"If it involves powers in any way, it's important." Armsmaster looked at me. "Metalmorph, you're not in trouble, not yet, but if we're left to guess what could be so bad that you'd keep it a secret, we're generally going to assume the worst and work from there."
I sighed. Damnit. I didn't like it, but he had a point.
"Fine, here goes nothing," I muttered to myself, and stuck my right hand out, palm facing up. A ball of liquid metal erupted from my palm and slowly coalesced into the shape of Sophia's folded phone. I winced from the familiar discomfort but tried to ignore it, to push it aside, and this time around to not cut corners and let my power cheat like it did with the trash can lid. This phone had to
work, and it had to be an exact duplicate.
Armsmaster's frown deepened, and he pulled his halberd from its magnetic mount at the back of his armor, and hovered the business end of the weapon over my phone. I blinked in recognition: he had a Geiger counter, as well as some other scanning devices, embedded in the axe-head undoubtedly feeding information to a heads-up display in his helmet, and the more I paid attention to the weapon, the more certain things stood out. Like the taser built into the pole's tip, or both ends having seams connected together by a line of interwoven carbon wire running the length of the weapon... grappling hooks?
I very-briefly entertained the thought of what I could learn from absorbing his halberd, then shook myself free of those thoughts and focused on finishing the phone. I hadn't gotten distracted like that since, well... since Sophia stabbed me with that dagger, now that I thought of it...
I leaned up to try handing Armsmaster the completed phone, yet he just gestured to the table with his halberd, and I set the phone down next to the vase. He nodded silently in return, and then tapped a panel on the side of his helmet underneath his right ear.
"Quarantine team to the Director's waiting lounge," he ordered to our collective shock, and after dad and I shared a brief look of worry, Armsmaster shrugged and put his weapon away. "Standard procedure. My gear says there's nothing dangerous, but the Director would insist on this regardless."
I watched as a few seconds later several PRT employees in what looked like heavy-duty hazmat gear walked in cautiously, one waving another Geiger counter around, running it past us and Armsmaster, even as he pointed to the vase and phone. "Everything on that table needs to go into isolation for inspection," he ordered, and one of the employees audibly groaned.
"We're gonna have to take the table too, then."
Armsmaster nodded and gestured for both of us to step aside. The phone and vase were each packaged in thick, opaque metallic bags before those were placed inside metal crates that my peripheral sense couldn't penetrate. I squinted, focusing my attention solely on the crate containing the phone, and felt my sensory power rapidly shift through modes I was already familiar with, some of them uncomfortably so, into the weird and unexplainable. "Seeing" radio waves didn't help like it sometimes would for, say, seeing through walls, or people for that matter. It shifted to a mode consisting of near-total darkness, with random streaks of light occasionally passing through everything except the boxes, to no apparent effect, but even that was too unpredictable to be of use…
Then with a sudden feeling of dizziness and confusion, my vision changed again, and things got
really weird: a cool, wet breeze flowed past me, and I wasn't in the PRT's headquarters anymore, but standing, alone, on a flat gray-metal pier mere feet from an endless expanse of water on the outskirts of a city that most certainly
wasn't Brockton Bay.
"What the hell?" I asked myself, the dizziness clearing up for just a moment as I took in the foreign architecture, the total lack of inhabitants, the multiple moons in the sky, and then the dizziness kicked in once more and I fell forward, collapsing onto my hands and knees.
"Taylor!" Dad lunged out and grabbed me by my left shoulder, helping me stand back up despite my confusion. My sight returned to normal, dad hovering close by my shoulder with a look of obvious concern, and Armsmaster to my right, halberd out, waving it over me and frowning deeply.
"Are you alright? Do you need to see a doctor?"
I shook my head, "no, I'm fine, I just lost my balance for a few seconds."
After a moment's hesitation, he sighed and nodded, placing his halberd back onto his back. "If you say so."
Dad sat back down, and motioned for me to join him. "What the hell happened there, kiddo?"
I gave Armsmaster a glare that all but screamed "private conversation," but relented after he didn't seem to get it. "I was trying to see through the quarantine boxes they used, but--"
"That should be impossible," he interrupted, folding his arms, "those crates are specifically designed to be impenetrable to any and all forms of active and passive scanning. Nothing short of a high-rated Thinker should be able to determine what's inside them without physically opening them."
I kept my mouth shut at that point. After a few seconds of silence, Armsmaster nodded to himself and quietly muttered, "I see," apparently satisfied with whatever he worked out. I wasn't going to confirm anything further for him, though.
"I think I've seen enough, send them in now please," an older woman's voice echoed out with a slight, but noticeable delay, and I realized I was hearing the Director's voice both from her office, and the radio broadcast being directed to Armsmaster's helmet. He nodded slightly, and addressed us a moment later. "Well, if you two are up for it," he paused, waiting for dad's acknowledgment, "then perhaps we should take this conversation to the Director's office?"
-----
Armsmaster stiffly held the door open for dad and me, nodding slightly once we'd walked in, before taking up a parade rest stance to the Director's right. The Director was considerably overweight, almost to the point of obese, and I could see a bunch of expensive medical equipment hooked up to one of her arms. She looked like a no-nonsense sort of woman, not your typical bureaucrat, and in other circumstances I don't think I'd be ashamed to say it might've been intimidating. She stood to shake dad's hand, and then offered me the same, but I was in no mood for pleasantries, folding my arms instead.
"Taylor..." Dad growled as he sat down, "you're being impolite."
I shook my head and sighed, before accepting her handshake just to get it over with.
"Sorry, ma'am," he apologized on my behalf.
She sat back down, while keeping her eyes on me, and the inklings of a smirk started to cross her face.
"It's understandable, Mr. Hebert, I understand you've both been through a lot these last couple of days."
"Hah," I snorted, folding my arms again. "That's putting it mildly."
"I suppose I should start out by asking if both of you are physically alright?"
An uncertain look flashed across my father's face for a moment as he glanced to me, and I shook my head in exasperation. "Relatively-speaking, yeah. We're fine."
"Good. Normally these sorts of conversations would start with pleasantries and smalltalk, but this isn't a normal meeting. What exactly
happened out there?"
"Coil's men attempted a kidnapping," I told her, watching their reactions while keeping my 'face', well, facing her. Armsmaster remained still, but the Director blinked a couple times, with a deer-in-headlights look on her face, before reaching underneath her desk to flip an almost-inaudible switch.
The door to her office locked with an audible thud, metal shutters unrolled from above the windows and the faint sound of hissing air surrounded her office, quickly abating after a few seconds, though I could also
feel something else working in the background, a sort of static hiss that was
annoying in a way I couldn't quite put into words, sort of like an itch on your teeth. Annoying, but manageable.
"Sorry," she continued with a scowl on her face, "security precaution. I've just isolated my office from the rest of the building, so we can have this conversation without anyone listening in." She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her desk, hands folded together. "I'm not doubting you out-of-hand, Metalmorph, but do you have any proof?"
I squinted, both incensed that, as usual, my word was being doubted, and puzzled over her use of my cape name. "...You know who I am, Director. Why are you calling me 'Metalmorph'?"
"Because it's considered rude to do otherwise when addressing a cape in costume, and because calling a cape by their real name is a bad habit that can and does get people killed."
Ah. "Oh. Um, thanks?" I briefly thought back to all those times I'd gotten called into Principal Blackwell's office, being prompted for proof, and never being able to provide anything more than my word against everyone else's. But then, I couldn't mimic voices... "Yeah, I have proof, give me a second."
"You have her in sight?" I started reciting the conversation, mimicking Coil's voice, and the Director's eyes widened fractionally for a moment.
"The target, and her father, at Ninth-and-Earl, eastbound. Faded blue coupe. I'm three cars back."
"Assault teams are en-route, ETA two minutes."
Armsmaster shifted in place, tensing up, almost as if he wanted to be
somewhere else right then and there.
"Continuing eastbound, target is... target is running, I might be made." I stopped for a moment to explain. "That was when I told dad we were being followed, and that it wasn't the people you assigned to watch our house."
Piggot nodded once, apparently not that bothered that I was aware our house was under surveillance, before I began again.
"Heavy cross-traffic at Ninth-and-Sentry, target isn't stopping. Permission to engage?"
"Negative. Maintain distance and stand-by, but do not engage." I frowned. "That's when we blew past the cop, he started chasing us, and I placed that call."
"With Shadow Stalker's personal phone, that you... acquired, no less," and she gave me a pointed look that screamed 'disapproval,' "sometime prior to your fight with Hookwolf this morning?"
"...Yeah," I sighed, defeated on that point, "how'd you know?"
Piggot leaned back and let out a long breath. "We knew Shadow Stalker had another phone in her possession, one that she technically wasn't supposed to have as a Ward." Dad tensed up, and Piggot nodded. "I know what you're going to ask, Mr. Hebert. It's a moot point. Shadow Stalker broke lockdown last night and assaulted another Ward in the process. Internally, we're treating her as a villain, which means Metalmorph is a very lucky hero right now." She smirked, looking back at me. "If it weren't for that, I could charge you with theft, but since Shadow Stalker has been released from the Wards and is being treated as a villain, it's not against the law for vigilantes to steal from villains, provided the stolen property isn't otherwise illegal to possess in the first place. On that front, you're fine."
I finally sat, letting myself relax a bit after clearing that hurdle.
"However," she broke eye contact, staring at her desk, "by using the phone for yourself, it's inadmissible as evidence, so if there's anything on it that could've helped your case at Winslow..."
Fuck. I balled my fists, wanting to hit something, but relented after Armsmaster tensed up again. I took a deep breath before letting it out.
"Emma's phone might still have copies of the shit she and Sophia sent eachother," I spat out.
She nodded, then gave me a fixed stare. "Perhaps. That's a concern more for the police's investigation."
I opened my mouth to object when she cut me off. "Do understand, Metalmorph, the police are handling the investigation of what went on at Winslow, our involvement only specifically pertains to parahumans, and Shadow Stalker is, as far as we know, the only other parahuman involved in that. Now, back to the issue of Coil, how do you know that the voice in that call was his?"
"...the fuck gives, Snakes? Your men aren't here, there's no unmarked van, nothing." I grinned as Piggot's jaw dropped and Armsmaster groaned. I couldn't help not to.
"You realize this was a test, Shadow Stalker. A test of your competence and your loyalty. The simplest of assassinations, easier than jobs you've accepted in the past, made easier with resources I provided at considerable expense."
"Bullshit! We both know damned well that worthless shit didn't cost you anything, the containment foam didn't fucking work, she shrugged that off, and the dagger was similarly useless Tinker trash. The rest of the gear? I don't have any fucking use for it!"
"Dagger?" Dad looked at me, suddenly worried. "What dagger?"
"Good question, Mr. Hebert." Piggot affirmed.
I held my right hand up, palm forward, and started reproducing the weapon, stopping only briefly to nod at Armsmaster when he drew his halberd once more. A minute and the uncomfortable sacrifice of so many nanites later, I handed the finished item to him. Like before, he looked it over briefly, even activating the hard light sheath, pursing his lips in surprise that it worked, then deactivated it and set it on the Director's desk.
"Quarantine, Armsmaster. You know the drill," she chided him, then looked at me worriedly, "but it looks like one of ours."
"Fucking Coil, fucking PRT, fucking Taylor... stupid bitch couldn't just stay in her place." I continued repeating in Sophia's voice as I locked eyes with Piggot. "She was working for Coil, and she's not the only one, Director. You're compromised." As the Director leaned back to stare at the ceiling, muttering under her breath, I turned to dad. "Sophia stabbed me in the stomach with that this morning." I shrugged nonchalantly, before noticing dad's look and added "It didn't hurt me."
Armsmaster picked up the dagger, and glanced at the Director once more, before she nodded at him. "Yes, go." She reached under her desk once more and flipped that switch again.
I let out a sigh as that damned annoying feeling went away, briefly amused as Armsmaster damn near sprinted out of the Director's office. I leaned back into my chair and folded my arms as the Director silently mouthed an obvious slew of silent profanities, still staring at the ceiling, before she gave me a look of frustrated resignation.
"I don't suppose, after all you've just dropped on my plate, you'd be considering--"
"Nope." I glared at her. "One of your Wards made my life a living hell for close to two years while also working for a supervillain, and I'm supposed to believe that you had no idea? I didn't come here to join the Wards, Director. I came here to tell you why not, and because my father had questions that he probably could've gotten answered just as well over the phone." I stood and turned towards the door, only stopping when he grabbed me by my left arm.
"Taylor?"
I shook my head and shrugged. "I'm just gonna go wait outside, dad." I pulled my arm free, continued towards the door, and turned to the Director halfway out the door. "My dad has a temper, and I'm not sure I want to be in here when he loses it."
------
I sat back down in the adjoining waiting room, glad for having been able to tell
someone in charge of my gripes and actually getting listened to. Also, glad to put some distance between myself and her office's security measures. Though with nothing else better to do, I let my peripheral sense loose once more, focusing in the direction of the Director's office...
"There you are."
I froze up, redirecting my senses outward in all directions and finding nobody, before realizing the voice came from a speaker embedded in the wall.
"Uhm, can I help you?" I asked, unsure of why they were bothering me.
"Yes, actually, between the low resolution of the lowest-bidder camera they have installed here and the lack of a microphone on your end, I'm having to read lips, and it's hard to hold a decent conversation when you're making educated guesses as to what the other side is saying. There's a conference room two doors opposite of the Director's office. Could you move there please?"
I shrugged. "Fine, whatever."
The room had one of those hollywood style tables, long and lined with chairs. The only thing missing was the room having a nice view. I was so busy looking around that it took me a moment to notice the room's sole monitor. A monitor that wasn't displaying the PRT's logo, but a computer-generated image of a cape's mask. A mask a
lot of people recognized.
"Dragon..." I whispered in awe, mostly to myself, stunned that I'd gone and graduated from talking to the head of the local Protectorate to the most famous Tinker on the planet.
"Metalmorph, though yes, I know who you are. Your identity is safe with me. Armsmaster's had some interesting things to say about you."
Yeah, I'll just bet. "What do you want?"
"A girl can't have a pleasant conversation with someone she finds interesting?" She sounded hurt, and I immediately felt guilty for snapping at her. "Well, like I said, Armsmaster finds you interesting, in an entirely non-creepy academic way before you ask," she chuckled, "which is just as well, because you're getting plenty of
that from Leet."
Uh... "What?"
"Right, where to begin..." Beat. "Armsmaster called me up a few minutes ago raving about 'the second coming of me,' and then showed me a standard PRT-issue hard light dagger that, he says, you apparently assembled from a portion of your own mass. Does that hurt, by the way?"
I shook my head. "Hurt? No. Feels wrong though. Why?"
"Well, everything I have on you so far says that you're probably the single-most versatile, if not powerful, straight-line Changer in North America." The monitor changed to a security camera recording that I immediately recognized as being the Boardwalk branch of the library, and... crap. I'd been so dead-set on doing my research that I was caught on camera dropping my cloak and taking Emma's form. "Does that hurt, changing forms?"
"No." Demonstrating, I assumed Emma's form and voice. "I don't feel much of anything, actually. I just think of what I need or who I want to be, and my mass rearranges itself."
The looping camera footage changed to a freeze-frame from Uber and Leet's video, my reproduction of the hard light effect to shield myself from Hookwolf's blades. "And you can mimic technology too, normal technology
and Tinker technology. Do you actually understand it?"
I thought about that. The mundane tech, like Sophia's cellphone, boiled down to a combination of my peripheral sense picking up radio waves, somehow innately decoding the signals to hear them, and then mimicking the hardware necessary to transmit them when placing a call... "No. Not enough to explain it. I'm just mimicking the shapes of everything involved and, I guess, my power is filling in the blanks."
"Not enough to understand, but enough to replicate. Changer-Thinker, then. And you learn the structures of things to mimic by...?"
I stared at the floor, not wanting to answer, the implications of what my power could do were already too fresh in my mind, particularly if I'd ever lost control of it.
The screen changed back to her mask. "Your power dismantles and reassembles it at the atomic level, doesn't it?"
How? Still in Emma's form, I looked back up at the screen in alarm and started giving serious consideration to running.
"Metalmorph, please, don't run, just calm down, you're
fine. I know you're scared, you're hurting, you've just got powers that you barely understand but you can do amazing things with them but the means are scary and..." she sighed. "I want to help you, but to do that I have to understand what I'm working with."
I glared at the screen, immediately suspicious of her motives. "
Why?"
She hesitated, so I stood, intent on leaving. "Because you need help, Metalmorph, but more importantly, you need a
friend. I've looked into your situation at Winslow, and frankly, it's criminal what they've put you through. I can't even begin to understand what you went through, but I do know that you've gone for a very long time without being able to place your trust in anyone."
I turned back to the screen, incensed. "You're right. You have
no idea what I've been through, and trust?" I snorted. "I had a best friend, and the past two years have taught me what friends and trust are worth. Why should I take that chance again, with you, when you don't even know me?"
Her mask avatar looked downwards, as if staring at the ground. "Because I'm going to take that chance with you," she whispered.
I... wait, "What?"
"I'm going to do something that I've never done before, but that I'm fully within my rights to try, and I'm going to take that chance with
you, Metalmorph. I've discussed it at length with Armsmaster, and he agrees, that the Brockton Bay Wards, as they are right now, are the
last place you need to be. It is
not the kind of environment you need to be placed in."
I chuckled despite myself. "I just told the Director that in fewer words, Dragon."
Her avatar changed back, as if to look straight at me. "But that's not to say you don't need training, guidance, and supervision." It looked aside, to its right. "Not to mention a hug, every now and then." It looked back to me, but the mask took on a warm smile. "I'm well within my rights to take on an apprentice, Metalmorph, and I'd like you to be my apprentice. How would you like to join the Guild?"
"Wait,
what!?"
AuthorNotes:
Would all of the people reading this story give this post a "Like". Pyrion and I are curious to see how many people are actually reading it. Thank you. ^_^
Pyrion: Well, RJ figured out how to highlight text in google documents.
Robo Jesus: Indeed I did.
A pity SB/SV doesn't have highlight tags though. Oh well.
Pyrion: For everyone complaining that there wasn't any obvious tie-in to the Stargate side of things, there you go. More will follow as Taylor encounters more things that throw her for a loop or two.
Robo Jesus: Or ten. But yes, we have been working on this story. A few delays now and then due to health concerns and random shit in real life, but we'll likely have one,
maybe two more updates before a short Hiatus as Pyr moves to his new place.
Pyrion: Escrow closes March 14th, so we'll see...
Robo Jesus: Indeed. Until next time everyone~
